Thesis title: Burckhardt’s Interpretations of Islamic Visual Artworks; Critical Study

Titus Burckhardt is one of the traditionalist outstanding characters who focuses on Islamic art in some of his writings and interpretats artwork based on his foundations but the question is whether it is possible to get a correct or authentic understanding of  Islamic visual arts according to his interpretations. The aims of this research are as follows: recognition of Burckhart’s interpretation method, understanding of correct or incorrect of his interpretations, and ultimately, achieving an exact realization of the artwork. Although Burckhardt has three suggested methods for interpreting artwork, but in practice he uses two methods: first , referring to tradition , and the second method is intuition. There are some criticisms on his methodology including generalizing at the time of interpretation, disagreement between interpretative propositions and historical propositions, danger of chimerical interpretations, imposition of mystic foundations into artwork. The research is conducted based on library sources, using descriptive,analytical and critical method.